Mullingar Congress promises to be tame

GAELIC GAMES:THE LACK of any motions addressing playing rules will help make for a distinctly tame GAA Congress next month. The 60 motions that did make it to the Congress clár will be published in Croke Park this morning as part of the 2010 GAA Annual Report, but under the current five-year directive, playing rules cannot be changed again until 2015.

Yet one of the motions that will be discussed at Congress, to be staged at Mullingar on April 15th-16th, calls for a change in that five-year directive, allowing for playing rules to be addressed on an annual basis, if so desired.

This motion, first mooted by Central Council, follows some criticism on the five-year directive on the changing of playing rules after last year’s Congress, where the majority of experimental playing rules adopted during the league narrowly failed to gain sufficient support – and under rule, couldn’t be revisited again in any form for another five years.

It’s uncertain if the change in the five-year directive will gain the necessary two-thirds majority support. As thing stand, changes to the playing rules are only taken every five years: a sub-committee is charged with drawing up proposals to address perceived problems in football and hurling, and the proposed rules are usually trialled in the league before being considered at Congress. Yet virtually no changes have been accepted at the five-yearly intervals, thus prompting this year’s motion to allow change on a more regular basis.

With no GAA presidential election necessary this year (Liam O’Neill is uncontested to succeed Christy Cooney, whose three-year term will end at the 2012 Congress) there is unlikely to be much to report from Mullingar next month.

Among the other changes that will be discussed is the motion to restore the semi-finals of both the National Football and Hurling League, but in Division One only – and starting from the 2012 season. Semi-finals were last played in the football league in 2007 and in the hurling league a year later, and since then the latter stages of both competitions have been hampered by inevitability.

However, the semi-finals would only be returned in Division One, with the other divisions continuing the format whereby the finalists are decided at the end of the various rounds.

The semi-finals were scrapped to help create something of a window between the end of the league and the start of the championship, although this decision seemed to undermine further the status of the league, also resulting in a notable loss of revenue at a time when the GAA is under increasing pressure to maintain it.

Congress will also debate a motion on player suspensions – which calls for match bans to be introduced in place of time periods, on a one-year trial basis, in 2012, at intercounty level. If successful it could then be introduced at club and county level from 2013.

The current system is somewhat notorious for creating some glaring anomalies, with players sometimes missing more or less games depending on which stage of the season they are suspended. The proposal is for a category-two offence, which currently results in a four-week ban, to instead carry a one-match ban. Likewise a category-three offence will carry a two-match ban, instead of the current eight-week suspension.

Another disciplinary-related motion will attempt to readdress the rule whereby the Central Competition Control Committee (CCCC) is allowed to request a referee to review an incident after examining the so-called video evidence, often to upgrade the offence and therefore allow the CCCC hand down the relevant penalty. Again, this has created some glaring anomalies, mainly given the inevitability that high-profile games are more likely to be televised and therefore be scrutinised on video. The motion is again drafted by the Longford club Legan Sarsfields, with the assistance of former referee John Bannon – although a similar motion last year was defeated.

What the motion proposes is that referees are spared this added responsibility, and that once their match report is filed, the CCCC can themselves propose further disciplinary action, without asking the referee to review his original decision on the basis of video evidence.